Image caption
Earlier this year an 85-year-old woman was brutally murdered in her Paris flat in an anti-Semitic attack

On the 80th anniversary of the Nazi Kristallnacht attack on Germany’s Jews, French Prime Minister Édouard Philippe has revealed a 69% increase in anti-Semitic incidents this year.

“We are a very far cry from ridding ourselves of anti-Semitism,” he said, calling on France not to remain indifferent to a “relentless” rise.

The 1938 night of broken glass produced an orgy of violence against Jews.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said she lacked the words to describe it.

In a speech in Berlin’s Rykestrasse synagogue, she said the pogrom night of 9 November led to the Holocaust, and yet anti-Semitism still flourished in public and online.

“We have sadly almost become accustomed to the fact that every synagogue, Jewish school, kindergarten, restaurant and cemetery needs to be either guarded by police or given special protection,” she said.

Both the chancellor and President Frank-Walter Steinmeier described Kristallnacht as a “rupture” in German civilisation.

Image copyrightAFP

Image caption
The German chancellor highlighted a recent attack on a Jewish restaurant in the eastern city of Chemnitz

The head of the Central Council of Jews, Josef Schuster, accused Germany’s far-right AfD party of stoking incitement. Every other week a synagogue or mosque was daubed with hate speech, he said.

In Austria, where at least 30 people died on Kristallnacht, President Alexander Van der Bellen said history had to be seen as an example of “where the politics of scapegoating, incitement and exclusion can lead”.

Attacks on French Jews

The French prime minister’s message came less than a fortnight after the worst attack on Jews in US history, when a gunman murdered 11 worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

Image caption
Thousands of Jewish-owned businesses were destroyed in the two-day orgy of violence in November 1938

Anti-Semitism in schools

Mr Philippe detailed plans for a network of investigators and magistrates dedicated to the fight against such “heinous acts” and said a national team would be on permanent standby to intervene in schools in support of any teacher confronted by anti-Semitism.

His government always put action ahead of the kind of fear and silence that had recently been documented by teachers under the hashtag “Pas de Vague” (Don’t make waves), he said.

Related Articles

Image copyright Reuters Image caption “Give victory back to Andrei Ishchenko!” – a protest in Vladivostok An opposition candidate has gone on hunger strike in the far east of Russia after suddenly losing a key regional election that he was poised to win. With more than 95% of votes counted in the Primorye region, the […]

Image copyright JEWEL SAMAD For hundreds of metres stretching away from the ocean is a mass of rubble made up of broken concrete, mashed homes and fishing boats turned upside down. Emanating from this rubble is a stench we could not identify until we went to a medical clinic where bodies were lined up. The […]

It is nearly two years since the Islamic State group were ousted from the city of Sirte, which was the home town of toppled Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. It was the militants’ base in North Africa and they put up an intense fight. Residents have returned but they say the government and international community have […]